# Any instances of former POWs going after former captors for "payback"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 29, 2015, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780 "2015-04-29T04:56:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/21 "2015-04-30T18:13:09Z")
> [@1kBR\_Kid](#): > > I should have said POWs (and others) who were tortured/subjected to inhumane conditions, like the soldiers who built the Thailand/Burma railway. That documentary was hard to watch. I couldn’t imagine someone not wanting revenge. I was amazed that a Japanese engineer, 55 years later, said they did nothing wrong. [Eric Lomax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lomax) was one who built the Burma Railway. After the war, he traveled to Thailand and met one of the men who interrogated him, and forgave him. This was the subject of Lomax’s book _The Railway Man_, and was made into a movie of the same title that came out last year. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/22 "2015-04-30T18:40:15Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > Not a POW, but a concentration camp inmate who [followed his captor into the French Foreign Legion and killed him in Indochina](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliahu_Itzkovitz) That is a fascinating story. So may things had to go his way for Itzkovitz to wind up in the right place to kill the guard. Wow. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/23 "2015-04-30T18:46:46Z")
An opposite example: Louie Zamperini (you saw or read _Unbroken_, right?) became a Christian evangelist after recovering from his PTSD. At one point he went to Japan to look up “The Bird” for the purpose of forgiving him, but the guard who had made him his special project refused to see him. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/24 "2015-04-30T18:53:23Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > In the non-POW context, the most interesting example I can think of happened to writer, chemist and former death-camp inmate Primo Levy. During the war, he had been enslaved and forced to work in a Nazi chemical factory; after the war, he was working as a professional chemist, when he had in that role business dealings by correspondence with the representative of a German chemical supplier - when he realized from the name that the guy was his former boss in the slave factory! > > Again, he didn’t want to take revenge … he engaged in a bizzare sort of dual correspondence: on the one hand, they kept writing to each other over the business problem, in strictly neutral terms; on the other, they started a personal correspondence - the ex-Boss, it seemed, remembered being Levy’s personal saviour and helper at the Camp (but Levy remembered events very differently!). > > In any event, they arranged to actually meet … but the German fellow died right before they could. Been years since I read the book, but I seem to recall that the message the reader was supposed to take away was one of differing perspectives, the German did infact do what he could do to save Primo, whether for altruistic or selfish motives or a combination is left up to the reader. [QUOTE=Simplico] Wow, if that’s not a movie already, someone should get on it. [/QUOTE] Opressed kills his former oppressor while both are busy oppressing a third party is not exactly a feel good movie is it? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/25 "2015-04-30T19:31:42Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > You should read the book Unbroken - it deals with this sort of theme: POW in brutal Japanese camp, years later looking up guards who made his life difficult. Though he didn’t want to take revenge. … > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > An opposite example: Louie Zamperini (you saw or read _Unbroken_, right?) became a Christian evangelist after recovering from his PTSD. At one point he went to Japan to look up “The Bird” for the purpose of forgiving him, but the guard who had made him his special project refused to see him. Don’t know if it’s in the movie, but in the book thay had a plan to kiil “The Bird” while the war was still going. They didn’t think they could survive his tortures through to the end of the war – which for all they knew could be a long way away. But he was tranferred to another camp before they could kill him. Later, Zamperini is transferred to the same camp, and The Bird begins the daily tortures again. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/26 "2015-04-30T19:38:40Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Don’t know if it’s in the movie, but in the book thay had a plan to kiil “The Bird” while the war was still going. They didn’t think they could survive his tortures through to the end of the war – which for all they knew could be a long way away. But he was tranferred to another camp before they could kill him. Later, Zamperini is transferred to the same camp, and The Bird begins the daily tortures again. That’s true - they planned I believe to tie him to a rock and drown him. The issue, though, was revenge after the war was over. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/27 "2015-04-30T19:41:10Z")
“The Bird” was high on the list of Japanese war criminals the US Occupation forces tried to find, but he successfully went into hiding for a decade or so. He emerged only after a blanket amnesty. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/28 "2015-04-30T19:51:38Z")
[On this page from the photo archive of the US Holocaust Museum](http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/result.aspx?search=SUMMARY%20PUNISHMENT/REVENGE) there are numerous photos of corpses with captions saying they are SS guards killed in revenge killings. By and large, though, I don’t believe the former prisoners were soldiers, though it seems pretty clear that in some cases Allied soldiers either let it happen and assisted in the revenge killings. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/29 "2015-04-30T20:02:52Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Been years since I read the book, but I seem to recall that the message the reader was supposed to take away was one of differing perspectives, the German did infact do what he could do to save Primo, whether for altruistic or selfish motives or a combination is left up to the reader. That’s not how I remember it - but then, it’s also been years since I read it. I thought the point was that the German fellow had created this whole mythology in his mind where he was a “good guy” through the war, that had little basis in reality. Just to make sure I’m not totally out to lunch, I looked it up - it’s pretty clear Levy thinks the German was basically, conciously or not, making shit up; though he did help Levy in one minor way - he gave him a pair of shoes - and may have helped him in other ways Levy didn’t know about or remember; but his claims, otherwise, simply could not be true - like the claim he was Levy’s close pal, or that Buna was designed to save people. Levy describes that as “insane” and remarks that it is remarkable that the fellow wrote this self-serving account to him - as he was the one person in the world who would know for sure that the account wasn’t true. From the Periodic Table: > [@](#): > > He affirmed that he had had a relationship with me almost of friendship between equals; that he had conversed with me about scientific problems and had meditated, on this occasion, on what “ precious human values are destroyed by other men out of pure brutality.” Not only did I not remember any such conversations (and my memory of that period, as I have said, is excellent), but against the background of disintegration, mutual distrust, and mortal weariness, the mere supposition of them was totally outside reality, and could only be explained by a very naive ex post facto wishful thinking; perhaps it was an incident he told a lot of people and did not realize I was the one person in the world who could not believe it. Perhaps in good faith he had constructed a convenient past for himself. He did not remember the two details about the shaving and the shoes, but he remembered others, similar and, in my opinion, quite plausible. He had heard about my scarlet fever and had worried about my survival, especially when he learned that the prisoners were being evacuated on > foot. On January 26, 1945, he had been assigned by the SS to the Volkssturm, the tatterdemalion army of rejects, old men, and children who were supposed to block the Soviet advance. Luckily, he had been saved by the aforementioned technical director, who had authorized him to run off to a rear area. > > To my question about IG-Farben he answered curtly that, yes, it had employed prisoners, but only to protect them: actually, he put forward the (insane!) opinion that the entire Buna-Monowitz plant, eight square kilometers of giant buildings, had been constructed with the intention of “protecting the Jews and contributing to their survival,” and that the order not to have compassion for them was “eine Tarnung” (“camouflage”). ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2015, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/30 "2015-04-30T20:10:39Z")
Andersonville This was the Confederate main prisoner of war camp during the American Civil War. Thousands of men died there from starvation and disease and after the war the Union tried to enact some kind of payback by putting the commander on trial. He ended up being hanged although there is alot of discussion about how the trial was run and actions by Union authorities were coveed up.[LINK](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersonville_National_Historic_Site#Aftermath) ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/31 "2015-05-01T00:10:33Z")
If we’re allowing non-strictly-POW examples, then there were apparently [Jewish vigilante groups](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakam) killing Nazis in Europe in the aftermath of WWII. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/32 "2015-05-01T03:35:25Z")
I’ve read a reminiscence from an Aus POW held in Japan, who said that on release “some other prisoners” went and found one of the guards and killed him. It would have been a criminal act, so not something you’d talk about a lot. But some of the soldiers were, of course, criminals, and some of them did, of course, have experience killing people and experience having friends who were killed: I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some of them had a fairly relaxed morality about killing prison guards. No cite. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/33 "2015-05-01T17:19:00Z")
I seem to recall from the Australian author Russell Braddon’s _The Naked Island_ – account of his experiences as a POW of the Japanese, 1942 - 45 – that after liberation, he and his fellow-prisoners (who had suffered horribly at the hands of their Japanese captors and guards) were given by the liberating troops, a window of opportunity to take direct revenge on those people; they briefly deliberated on whether to do so, but basically concluded “the hell with it – they’re probably more messed-up than wicked – let it slide”, and left them alone. The author just presents this as “make of it what you will”. Although Braddon stopped short of attempts to “hunt down and kill”; his book as above is full of understandable hatred and rancour against his captors, and by and large, against the entire Japanese people. Over the decades, he lost this hatred, and came to feel that for him, forgiveness and reconciliation were appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/34 "2015-05-01T17:20:26Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > [Eric Lomax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lomax) was one who built the Burma Railway. After the war, he traveled to Thailand and met one of the men who interrogated him, and forgave him. This was the subject of Lomax’s book _The Railway Man_, and was made into a movie of the same title that came out last year. I saw that movie a few months ago and was surprised by how emotional it made me feel. So I read the book, which was even better. I highly recommend the book if you have the time, or the film if you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/35 "2015-05-01T19:51:57Z")
Someone I used to work with confided in me a completely unsubstantiated-but-no-reason-to-doubt-it story about this kind exact thing. You don’t have to believe it, but I did. He was not a classic POW (like in a camp), but an captured enemy combatant on a foreign soil during a conflict in the last 50 years. Sorry, no cite and you are free to dismiss it as complete BS. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/36 "2015-05-02T04:25:25Z")
Dont forget that right after a war ends everything changes. Enemies suddenly can turn into allies. Like in the case after WW2 with the US and suddenly the West Germans and Japanese were our allies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780.md?page=1)